6 Steps Off the Edge of Everythingness
by QFiction
Summary: Maybe, if they keep running, they'll slip off the edge of whatever is so goddamn difficult.


**TW: cancer, mental illness, character death (all implied). Also I got all my characterization from other angsty fanfics, having never played this game.**

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1.

It isn't often that they do this, but it seems they've been doing it more lately. Maybe Axel's imagining things. He does that sometimes.

Maybe imagine isn't the right word, but it's the word that brings a smirk to his lonely lips as he grips the steering wheel in the dead of night, counting the seconds he has to stay parked. This goody-goody part of town has too many cops. His license isn't legal. It's easier to explain the sensation in the pit of his stomach as well-earned anxiety than anticipation, because here he is, here they are, doing this again.

He clenches his teeth as he watches the window. It's a completely stupid habit, because clenching his teeth doesn't help to keep him in touch with reality, and those moments spent out of touch with reality are not spent toward watching Roxas climb out his bedroom window. Axel does a lot of stupid things. Sometimes he thinks he's just stupid.

Roxas makes it out, disrupting about 60 tree branches and a family of loud birds as he does so, and Axel cringes. The only words Roxas forms are implied by the tiniest smile that crosses his face as he avoids eye contact, tosses his bag on the flatbed, and steps up to his seat. The friction of tire on asphalt isn't calming as they pull out of lower middle class suburbia.

It is by the time they reach the interstate. It's then that their first words are spoken, a "how long?" that creeps out from the corner of Axel's lips.

"Until 4, maybe."

Axel nods, eyes addicted to the roll of the road. He is definitely stupid, but it takes so much effort to give a damn that he gave up years ago. There aren't any cops now. He flips on his headlights, for the sake of the shadows and the light. This is always the most beautiful thing to him. This is what he's needed.

He feels it in his lungs when he hits the midnight road trip high. The perfect light vibration of cement, the gentle hum of the engine, the endless, unblinking stare. For a moment, everything is continual. For a moment, everything is safe. In this moment, everything is perfect.

It's not often that they do this, but it seems they wait a little longer each time. At least it seems that way to Roxas. Maybe he's just hopelessly impatient. He gets that way sometimes. Like, the past 16 years since he was born kind of sometimes.

Now, as he sits on the edge of his bed and stairs at his silent cell phone, waiting for the text, the text, is no exception.

[get in the car.]

He grins, widely, openly, and stands suddenly. A bag is secured on his back, and around his waist, because Roxas has to be certain about these things. It's hard enough to climb out his window and into the neighboring tree and down to the ground and out to the truck and the world and freedom as it is.

The stars are bright but too far away. He barely sees the outline of the truck in the darkness. Only its rims glisten by the light of the moon, shimmering water in a horrid desert. It's been too long.

There is no temptation for greeting, but Roxas does have to bite his tongue so he isn't caught saying, "Get me the hell out of here." And then properly quickly he's in the passenger's seat with a seatbelt and leaning against the cracked window, and he isn't so impatient anymore.

They're off. Sneaking out of suburbia, past the high school, skipping the gas station, cutting sharply across the city line like it's been tightening around them. Maybe it has. Roxas certainly feels it, a rope around his neck. Teenage angst is sickeningly poetic, and he is Emily Dickinson.

Beyond city lines, they are free. Axel murmurs something, and Roxas doesn't even hear what it is, but he could only be asking one thing. He's checking in on reality one more time before they escape.

In a way, it proves that all of this "freedom" isn't truly free at all. It's recess, it's visiting hours with temptation, it's a glance out a window at what almost is. It is not a chance to escape, but instead a chance to wander around their windblown backyards until their ankle bracelets ting and they scurry back to house arrest. If boundlessness is a condition of freedom, they have none.

But they can pretend. They're getting good at that. When one doesn't look at the digital clock on the dash, glowing rudely green into what is clearly a monochrome night, then one does not see the time. One can forget time exists, or at least that it is forced to.

For Roxas, at least, when he tries really, really hard, he can escape the fencing of responsibility around the edge of his mind for a moment or two, but only out here on the road. It's why he comes. That jolt of intoxicating freedom that damn near leaves him gasping for breath at the beauty and power of freedom. The crash back down is painful, always is, will be again at quarter to four today.

That doesn't stop him, though.

Axel probably feels better sooner, Roxas figures. He can tell by the sound of his breathing. Even and steady and gentle, as if he's asleep. Roxas has learned to stop checking if he is. It always ruins the mood, and Axel never is. Roxas thinks that Axel wouldn't dare lose a moment as precious as this to sleep.

Roxas is right. Axel's moment's kinda hazy, though, like sleep. There's that same sleepy feeling, the one at the top of your lungs that's like fog clouding where a block of consciousness usually sits, and streaming softly all the way up and curling around your brain until you accept everything and just live. Axel only lives in moments like this. That's all.

Maybe it's because he's already crazy to begin with that he slips into their exquisite, long awaited trance so quickly. For Roxas, he enjoys a very simple pleasure of staring out his window a while. They drive, and they drive, and he forgets everything right down to his name, so that's kinda nice.

Miles do not pass, only road. Unending, unbroken, sliding cleanly, a conveyer belt beneath the mud-choked wheels. There aren't other cars, because no one dares enter this hell 15 minutes into a November Thursday, and only two dare "leave", maybe ever. The side of the road is empty field, dirty and unkempt and positively useless, a vast ocean of absolute nothingness. It runs together into a still image before Roxas's eyes, a landscape unworthy painting. For Roxas, it is not the journey, but the destination.

For Axel, it is not the destination, but the Journey. He's overcome by something close to lust for more, more, more of this for a few seconds, and then the feeling slips away naturally, on instinct, because the world is a terrible place and he has to check the time. It's 1:30. Teeth grind, fingers grip. Air puffs out through his nose. An hour fifteen, gone in seconds.

These small tweaks in body language are the only warning Axel gives before he moves for the first time in over an hour, cracking his wrists into a sharp turn that sends them straight into the shallow lake of weeds and grass and. The ride is no longer smooth, and they bounce in their seats, but neither is surprised at the course change. Fifty paces off the road, the car heaves to a heavy halt. Axel and Roxas breathe.

Doors open like wings, don't snap shut because who pays attention to locking or unlocking and no one is going to steal a shit pick up an hour fifteen from some shit city in the middle of gorgeous nowhere. The sky is clear, and the stars are brighter now. Light pollution is the worst kind of pollution. Axel doesn't care about dying of an asthma attack that leads to pneumonia tomorrow. He only cares about seeing the sky tonight. Out here are the most stars Axel has ever seen. It's not many.

Axel glides through the air a moment, arms out and flowing in the darkness. He smiles gently. Roxas is there, but not really. Well, maybe. That does not stop Axel from falling elegantly on his feet, putting to work those years of theatrics back before he stopped giving a shit about absolutely anything at all. Back before he stopped feeling. Now he feels only wind and the leaves which lie on it and there is absolutely nothing in this world quite like a good cold breeze so he peels away as many layers of jacket and hoodie and microfiber as he dares and tingles, nature buzzing excitedly against him.

It's not really dancing. Not so beautiful or thought out, not so much meaning. He's just, there.

Axel is just alive.

That must mean he dies when he slows his waltz and lands with all the passive grace of autumn's red leaves. But he does not die, just stares up longingly at the stars. This, being out here, is no driving, but it is still lovely, and he enjoys every minute of it.

They must be 50 miles out of town by now, and that will just have the be enough, because Roxas does not float when he leaps from the car. Instead, he places deliberate foot stops a few meters.

He throws his head back.

He screams.

If Axel's living is an awkward sort of dance, Roxas's living is a guttural sort of opera. He leans back and he wails up to the heavens that stole his father and won't stop trying to claim his mother and maybe just want him too, by the way he's always in the hospital, unable to breathe.

This is his breathing now.

The high kicks in then, some cross between an upper and an aphrodisiac straight to every synapse of his brain. As the stars are shut between the eyes he slams shut, arms stuck out, screaming uncontrollably, the rest of the world fades to blackness. There is no hesitation, no return, no consequence. It makes his heart race in his chest and his skin tingle though his clothes are not so scattered among the plant life beneath his feet. His throat stings quickly and he loves it, tears pricking at his eyes.

It's too intense to keep forever, ripples of everythingness through his body, so he lets it end as he runs out of air for the third or fourth time, lungs burning with force and labor. It is not enough to keep him happy but it's enough to keep him satiated, keep him from exploding very soon, so he opens his eyes to the bright starry night and throws himself to the ground beside Axel.

There are no clouds, because there are never any clouds to watch when one desires to watch them. As Axel and Roxas lie stationary, the stars perch stationary in response, staring straight back at their watchers. Adolescent bodies tremble with adrenaline, skin tingling in the most delightful way, and they know how it feels to be a star, as they swear they are shining against the blackness of the unlit ground.

Axel and Roxas do not touch. They do not speak. This is not something that they share. This is something that they do individually, beside one another. This is something stupidly spiritual or perhaps (and most likely) extremely, extremely hormonal, and it is obvious that spiritual and hormonal things should be kept to one's self.

When a conversation does start, it is on accident.

Axel asks, "What?" heart still pounding pleasantly in his chest.

And Roxas responds, "nothing," because he said nothing,

And Axel says, "No, what did you say?"

And Roxas insists, "Nothing, I didn't say anything."

Axel grits his teeth. His knuckles go white. It was lovely while it lasted. At least he sees nothing but the stars.

Between the absolutely pleasant realm of fiction and the devastating expanse of reality, there is a thick area where the two are blurred. That, he muses, nature as his witness, is the spectrum of insanity. It is his home, and although it often serves to pull him out of cruel reality, it is far crueler to pull him out of this, because this is as close to fiction as one can get.

Axel now waits, patiently, for the drive home. His last chance of the evening to try to reclaim that state which is precious and his. His high, his grace, his glory. Stretching calloused hands toward the sky, he waits.

Beside him, Roxas finishes his panting. He's overdone it, overstressed his lungs. It's tight and painful and he feels vaguely lightheaded, and it is no longer in such a way that he is lighter than air pleasantly floating alongside the viciousness of life. Now, he feels the downside to doing whatever it takes to feel absolutely alive: he feels absolutely dead.

He coughs hoarsely, helplessly, body seizing and the back of his head slamming back against the grass. Lovely while it lasted, this escape. Completely worth it. Just, also worth missing, now that it's gone.

Something spasms in his chest, and though he has reached a point where physical pain only triggers emotional boredom, he can't help the bittersweet wave which drowns him, fluid in his failing lungs. This is the thin line between life and death, and it is where he belongs. It is his home. Each adventure into the world of the living must include a journey back home to the doorway of the nearly dead, and the car ride back is not painful enough to count. The realization that these adventures are little more than sadomasochistic jokes they play upon themselves, is.

Neither know that it's 2:37 when Axel stands up, but it is. With one arm, he helps Roxas to his feet. Roxas stumbles uncertainly until Axel holds him in place with the other hand. He says nothing except for a quick quip of a command, "stay" maybe, with his eyes, and then reaches back down to retrieve his lost clothing. When Roxas climbs back into the truck, it is with microfiber around his neck, protecting delicate trachea, and gently trembling fingers against his own.

Axel takes his place back in the driver's seat, slamming the door and trapping the sound of Roxas's gentle coughs inside his old truck. At 2:41, the ignition groans to life, and Axel makes a sweeping turn back toward the road. They hit it, and he falls into shallow euphoria.

At 3:33, they cross back over city limits. At 3:56, Roxas opens the passenger's side door and returns to the night, about an hour before his day-to-day must resume again.

At 3:57, Axel realizes the two following things: they did not get a single food or drink out of the bag Roxas threw into the back, and his hand is now cold because Roxas's had been resting on it, on the middle console, for the past hour and twenty.

He grinds his teeth, and his knuckles go white before he realizes that he is chuckling at himself. He really is stupid.

2.

Axel is dancing and Roxas is singing. In a way, it feels very much like the previous time. Free, full, perfect. It does not feel like light, but like a home in the darkness, somewhere they are safe and protected and just because they cannot see does not mean they are missing seeing anything. Darkness is pure, and more fulfilling than anything light could lend them.

It is not familiar, like they're doing it again, but right, like they never really stopped.

The only difference lies in something Axel know better than to analyze and something Roxas cannot pin down. If the stars know, the do not tell. The do not alter the way they gaze down just because Roxas is screaming tunelessly for Axel to hear the beat, or because Axel is finding melody and stamping around to point out the grace of desperate cries.

Tonight, they are together, even if they do not know it themselves.

If something triggers this change, too, neither bothers to care, because when they are here there is nothing else. No memories to recall, no week to wonder about. Just this. Just them. Just these edges upon which they sit and dangle their feet, cares lost at the bottom of something deep and unreachable.

When they fall, they fall upon each other. They do not move. Perhaps stars overlap sometimes, too, unknown to anyone on earth. To the lonely eye, they'd appear as one, shining brightly. Perhaps.

Axel notices first that something has changed because Roxas shakes so sharply as he reclaims his breath. As still as he tries to lie, the back of one hand tossed sloppily on Axel's, he cannot stop himself from shuddering, and it's the movement against Axel's palm that makes his eyes open slightly.

It's not something they planned. They are just passengers on the same train, trying to reach similar stops far away from home. Yet still, here it is. Axel flips his hand awkwardly and takes Roxas', and they silently chase the tail end of euphoria together.

Or maybe something else. Like this, it is different. Not unpleasant, but not at all the same as what each enjoyed individually. Something warm and campfire-bright leaps from Axel's hand, so real Roxas can almost see it as it races up his arm and into the hazy soft mass of his consciousness and down his spine and into his very being. Roxas is something cool and certain and true in a way. He's found something from reality finally worth experiencing, he realizes, and that's the last clear thought he has before lightning must strike him for the sake of the thunder crash.

In fact it strikes them both, cold and fiery and breathless to Roxas and loud to Axel and they must hang on for dear life to each other for a moment one sits up and chokes on death itself and the other curls in upon himself, squeezing his hands and grinding his teeth and trying to escape that noise which is attacking him.

Axel is squinting against the dull roar when he manages to stumble to his feet, dragging Roxas with him. It's a long drive home, not nearly quiet even though nothing is said.

Roxas wonders if that is a sign that they have done something wrong. He hopes not, because there's something about that new sort of buzz in the back of his skull he was enjoying. Really, he deserves that much, even if not for very long.

3.

The moment they step out of the truck, Roxas is clamouring around to the driver's side and throwing ever-unsteady hands around Axel's neck. Eyes widen, but per usual, nothing is said. The only response is a gentle hold around a slight waist.

Roxas is steady. Axel is grounded. Everything is unfamiliar, but everything is good.

And so, they enjoy the everythingness.

Roxas takes a step back, guiding, and adjust his arms just so until they are dancing. Not stumbling. And lightly, cautiously, Axel begins to sing, and neither are screaming.

Roxas is glad he does not have to open his mouth. He is afraid of what he would say, and how it would drag him back to somewhere he doesn't want to be and certainly doesn't want to drag Axel, because Axel... Because.

Green eyes flicker back and forth from blue back into the darkness, because he is leading now, but keeps checking for approval and consent in a way which is not quite vulnerable but still not self-assured. He is still not used to togetherness. For the first time in a long time, he has something he wants to get right.

And here, in the gentle glow of the starlight, now a canopy, romantic, Roxas can see that. He can see that Axel is finally feeling something more real than a high and more close than eternity. It looks good, stunning even, on his pointed features.

It looks like falling in love.

And maybe Roxas panics a little, the way he finally opens his mouth but out come no words. When Axel looks at him, concern a fog which curls over the forests of his eyes, Roxas stops in his tracks. No, he cannot ruin this, he has to forget the world, just for a second, he has to forget, he has to-

It's in that, which is definitely panic, that he steps up on his tiptoes and presses thin lips against Axel's, eyes slamming shut and heart hammering and then nothing because Roxas feels this and it feels good.

Good enough to make him forget.

Axel doesn't stop kissing him back until Roxas coughs into his mouth. And starts to apologize there, too, but stops short as he falls a little into Axel and mostly into the cold dead ground. Axel says only, "No," as he tries desperately to hold on, grinding his teeth and whitening his knuckles around Roxas' trembling arms because he refuses to let this be real.

He wants Roxas, but he doesn't want this. Needs this to not be true, because goddamn, it's been so long and he can't fucking stand it, Goddamn it Roxas, no

4.

When next they are supposed to go, they do not.

5.

There's always been a level of illegality involved in their trips. Axel's license isn't even legal. It's always just been part of the effect. But like this, with a hospital band around Roxas' wrist, somehow feels much worse.

It's not enough to make him stop, though.

This time is special, and nothing will get in the way. It's the first time that it… that it feels like this. Together. One hand on the steering wheel, the other holding on tight to something shaking and cold and absolutely important. And it's the first promise Axel's kept in all his life.

Roxas tightens his grip on Axel when they slip innocently past the police station, something they did not pass coming from Roxas' house but do now because they're coming from the hospital. He does not ask to go back. He needs this too much.

A smirk plays at his lips, because he thinks that he doesn't care much about the consequences, and that makes him sound like Axel. Axel, who has so much more to risk tonight than he does, so much more than usual, yet at the same time has nothing to lose.

Well, almost nothing.

When they park, Axel is out of the driver's seat after a blink of an eye. Roxas has stopped complaining that he's fine, that he doesn't need any help, and just surrenders, wrapping his arms around Axel's neck and leaning heavily against his chest. He tries to make it feel like a hug, and wonders who he's trying to lie to. The stars, maybe.

He's still leaning against Axel when he starts screaming, but now the tips of his bed-mussed blond hair are tickling Axel's chin. They are an incomplete eclipse, but maybe the stars can't see that he's too small to cover Axel completely. Maybe the stars think they're one. Roxas finally knows that they are what he's screaming to.

Axel screams, too, enough for his chest to shake violently against Roxas' back. He keeps screaming when Roxas stops, goes limp, goes pale. He screams louder when Roxas sniffles a bit, clearly losing yet another battle of body against mind. They stop together, and Axel holds him.

They don't dance because Roxas can't stand anymore.

They do lie down in the grass. Maybe, if they lie really still, they'll just sink into it together, and wouldn't that be easier than death and funerals and loss. But Roxas, is still shaking, always shaking, and Axel is breathing steadily, his chest rising and falling against Roxas' ear.

An owl hoots, and bugs chirp. Life continues on.

The night is cold, or maybe the fall is, so they climb (or are lifted) back into the warmth of the truck.

"Let's keep running."

Axel makes tight fists and crushes his teeth together, just to be sure he just heard what he just heard, but Roxas is smiling softly sadly sweetly in the passenger seat, in a way that is very real and very certain.

Although Axel doesn't ask, Roxas clarifies. "I want to see the world, just a little more of it."

When the open road stretches before them, the world seems endless. Axel remembers trying to catch freedom. Maybe they caught it this time, effortlessly. Maybe.

Roxas' breaths grow thinner beside him. Maybe death isn't a moment, but a whole night. "Pull over," Roxas says lightly, and it's probably not on purpose.

The stars echo down at the vehicle, which is paused again, now surrounded by the new, the unknown, a place they've never been before. With all his failing energy, Roxas takes it upon himself to crawl into Axel's lap, complete with sad eyes and a racing heart.

For a few minutes, they're just two dumb kids making out in a truck. It's almost funny, how typical and juvenile and normal they are like this. It's almost believable, this silly dream. It's almost theirs.

Almost.

But Axel gasps, patting gently at Roxas' unsteady shoulders until he sits up, swerving with dizziness. "The cops," Axel breathes, and repeats it because he's sure Roxas didn't hear past the coughing.

"You hear sirens?" The words are rough, strained, but when Axel nods, Roxas only smiles warmly. "They're not real, okay?" Fists grip white around a hospital gown, white teeth grind together hard. "I'm real. And I'm not going anywhere, okay? It's just me" -a coughing fit- "and it will be just me here tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, I promise." Trembling, Roxas leans back down. Kisses him softly, sweetly, and Axel should hate it and maybe if he weren't dying already Axel would kill him for a kiss like that, because it's a kiss that feels like goodbye. But Roxas doesn't say goodbye, he only says, "It's time to go back."

Axel, who has always toppled someplace between reality and fiction, starts the ignition.

Roxas, who has always walked, shaking, somewhere between life and death, settles into the passenger's seat.

That beat up old pick up truck eases gently forward, toward the hospital, and ever so slightly over every edge.

6.

Axel lies, wind in his hair, grass under his back. He hears the screaming. He hears the coughs. It's just like old times.

He doesn't grind his teeth. Maybe he doesn't want to know.

Someone crashes next to him. A warm, familiar hand takes his own. And he squeezes now, but not to whiten his knuckles. Maybe he doesn't care.

Doesn't care if it's not real anymore. Doesn't care if it never was. Doesn't care where the line between reality and fiction is, not anymore, even if it lies next to him and squeezes his hand back and murmurs "I think I love you."

There's only one thing he cares about, basking on the edge of everythingness.

"Yeah, I think I love you, too."


End file.
